DL1: First Draft Complete

This first upload is a lightly edited version of the first draft of P1 of Plenum. It's exciting to get to another milestone on this project that technically started as a poem in an Intro to Poetry creative writing class at Virginia Tech with Katherine "Bonnie" Soniat.

I wrote a first draft of what becomes the trunk story here in another fiction writing class with Bonnie, and then expanded the scope of the story in my MFA program at Spalding University.

My creative thesis at Spalding was a collection of linked stories that I'm proud of, but was ultimately unsatisfied with how underdeveloped they felt. With another decade of life and reading experience behind me, I started re-working the stories into the Twine game released here.

This first draft is a mix of re-worked stories from my creative thesis and new writing. My writing process is very different from past efforts where I sat in front of my computer and wrote from start to finish, often getting frustrated when I wasn't sure how to proceed. 

Now, I start in a notebook, transfer the writing to a computer document each day, and then into Twine itself. The node format feels freeing after the page, and lets me move around if frustration crops up. I use a spreadsheet to track tasks I'm not engaging with immediately to make sure I don't forget to come back, but also to give myself permission to move on to something else.

Converting linear stories into something a player can interact with is challenging, but the new perspective on the characters and situations has strengthened the writing. A weak ending to a short story gets even weaker when you try to divide it into choices, and has already led to a big revision for the next release in the "Jigsaw" branch story.

My plan is to update the build monthly until it's ready for public release by year end.